Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede has said 100 percent of problems encountered by candidates in the course of registration for the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Direct Entry (DE) are self-inflicted.
Oloyede stated this in Ibadan, on Saturday at the conclusion of the monitoring of the ongoing registration exercise where he had done a cross-examination of candidates who reported challenges in the ongoing registration.
The interrogations brought up discoveries that some of the issues candidates faced in registration were lack of coordination among family members, carefree imputation of data, wrong imputation of National Identity Number (NIN), failure of registrants to follow prompts, failure to follow the JAMB stipulated rules for registration.
Oloyede said: “We have interviewed all those who claimed to have problems and the judgment is left to you whether the problem they have or claimed to have is genuine or self-inflicted.
“A situation where the father is doing one thing and the mother another one and the boy himself is doing a different thing and do not coordinate or a situation where the boy who claimed that he did not get it for three days later confessed that it was the second day after he had sent a wrong signal.
“Outside here, you cannot find any candidate who cannot generate. But, we now went further to ask that even if you can generate, did you have problems in the past and three or four of them raised their hands.
“We went into the system and we showed them what they got wrong. All those who have problems are 100 percent self-inflicted. Have you seen any problem that is from JAMB?”
Asked about notions that the registration process is complicated and limited to only stipulated centres, Oloyede said JAMB choose designated centres for registration so that candidates do not fall victim to fraudulent people who are out to steal candidates’ identities.
He noted that part of its control mechanism is that candidates initiate the registration from particular phones before going to registration centres.
Oloyede, however, noted that JAMB also allowed for self-service, this year, where candidates can do the registration themselves without relying on staff at the approved registration centres.
He added: “We have put up a process to guard against fraudulent practices. Despite our control mechanism, there are still many out there that are out to defraud candidates.
“If you ask that registration should be done everywhere, just like in developed countries, we know our peculiarities and we cannot do such now. We began self-service this year, where we say those who can do it
themselves should simply go to stipulated centres and do it themselves. This is because we don’t want candidates to fall into the hands of fraudulent people.
“If you ask people to register anywhere they like, there is the danger of people going to cybercafé to register.
“What usually happens is that people give out all their details, like registration number, password, e-mail to the cybercafé operator. These are details that should not just be made public.
“If we allow just anyone do the registration, you will see that some will not be able to write the exam. That is why we are using phones this time such that a candidate is tied to a phone. It is just like mobile banking. We are doing things this way such that fraudulent people won’t steal their identity.”
He added that JAMB had also tackled complaints of candidates that Computer Based Test (CBT) centres are the ones that make mistakes by asking that candidates fill a form in their own handwriting and have the physical form uploaded along with the electronic copies.
Oloyede added, “Candidates who complain that those at the CBT centres make mistakes, we gave them physical forms this year to use their own handwriting, that physical form is also uploaded with the electronic copy.
“In the last three years, candidates on their own typed their names on their phones and we do not ask any candidate what their name is.
“It is the name that you send to our system that we build on yet they are still making mistakes and come to pay JAMB to correct their names.
“We want to make sure that the person who is helping them to do it will also crosscheck that what the candidate has typed and sent is the same as written on the paper. That will be uploaded along with what
you are doing.”
While stating that JAMB already had close to 600,000 registrants for both UTME and DE, Oloyede said the board was on course to meet its 1.5 million registrants target by March 26.
